Violence, identity and Self determination: narratives of conflict from the Kashmir Valley

Date:

Monday, February 10, 2014 - 15:30

Speaker:

Sramana Majumdar

Room 423 Tobin Hall

Refreshments will be served

Sramana Majumdar is a Senior Research Fellow at the Department of Psychology, Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi, India. She is currently working as a Fulbright Visiting Research Fellow at the Hiatt School of Psychology, Clark University, Worcester, MA. Since obtaining a Masters in Criminology, she has been interested in studying various aspects of violence, attitude towards violence, emotional and cognitive antecedents and repercussions of violence, violence and youth and the like. As part of her doctoral project she is studying the impact of exposure to violence and mind set on the emotional and behavioural aspects of the youth in Kashmir. She has also been interested in looking at gendered aspects of the exposure to violence, intergroup reconciliation and the role of identity among the youth in Kashmir.

The Valley of Kashmir has been a disputed territory for more than two decades. It is today a site of intractable conflict and one of the most militarized areas in the world. The ‘Kashmiri’ narrative has gone through many twists and turns, from secular self determination to a radical and highly polarized anti-state character, building upon a collective memory of struggle and suffering. The ethno-political-religious conflict has affected the lives of almost every civilian within the Valley and in the larger Kashmiri Diaspora. This presentation summarizes her experiences and observations while working with the youth in Kashmir Valley. She hopes to facilitate a discussion around the discourse of self determination, identity assertion and resistance to occupation that has been driving the movement in Kashmir and the consequent violence that has dominated civil life from the latter half of the 1980s.

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